Young Female Veterans Suicides Nearly 12 Times Non-Veterans Rate

Suicide rate of female military veterans is called 'staggering' 
Los Angeles Times
by Alan Zarembo
Jun 08, 2015

Sara Leatherman in Iraq in 2006. A back injury forced her to leave the military in 2009. She also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Leatherman was 24 when she hanged herself in her grandmother’s shower in 2010.

New government research shows that female military veterans commit suicide at nearly six times the rate of other women, a startling finding that experts say poses disturbing questions about the backgrounds and experiences of women who serve in the armed forces.

Their suicide rate is so high that it approaches that of male veterans, a finding that surprised researchers because men generally are far more likely than women to commit suicide.

"It's staggering," said Dr. Matthew Miller, an epidemiologist and suicide expert at Northeastern University who was not involved in the research. "We have to come to grips with why the rates are so obscenely high."

Though suicide has become a major issue for the military over the last decade, most research by the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department has focused on men, who account for more than 90 percent of the nation's 22 million former troops. Little has been known about female veteran suicide.

The rates are highest among young veterans, the VA found in new research compiling 11 years of data.

For women ages 18 to 29, veterans kill themselves at nearly 12 times the rate of nonveterans.

In every other age group, including women who served as far back as the 1950s, the veteran rates are between four and eight times higher, indicating that the causes extend far beyond the psychological effects of the recent wars.

The data include all 173,969 adult suicides -- men and women, veterans and nonveterans -- in 23 states between 2000 and 2010.
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Linked from Military.com